IN response to Pamela Frankland (Letters, July 4), I would like to clarify that however tempting it would be to use a big stick to make the lazy work on a farm, I don’t think we need go that far.

You rightly identified the problem is the attitude of some who turn up to job interviews just to qualify for benefits.

Well there’s the solution to get a workforce, you use simple economics. Present able bodied people with a work offer on a farm and if it is refused you show them the door instead of the state chequebook.

I haven’t worked on a farm. Instead I served my time on building sites and that’s hard work too, but very simple to learn the drill.

The experience is gained by doing, not through a university training course on how to pick fruit, so that excuse is gone.

When I recently passed the Bluebell farm at Askham Bryan it had lots of local families including children picking their own, so I see no reason why grown British adults can justify refusing such work.

As for unions, I was certainly not suggesting we have them on farms.

If you re-read my comments, the point was that if they did form one then the food productivity would fall due to strikes.

Unions would leap at the opportunity to hold the nation to ransom again.

Dr Scott Marmion, Woodthorpe, York